Podmates Rebecca, Dario, Andreas, and Solan worked on yesterday’s rainy Monday morning in the large greenhouse, repotting tomatoes, mostly, including ones grown from heirloom seeds from my daughter-in-law Sue’s recently deceased Mom’s long decades in the garden. So good to have this way of honoring her memory. She was an elder from whom we could have learned much about all aspects of growing and preserving food. Too bad she lived in Ohio! Sue handed me a packet of her Mom’s seeds when I returned from Massachusetts with puppy Shadow last November. They stayed in the glove box for a couple of months, until I remembered them! Luckily, in time to plant this year.

Still lots of plants to go out, including all the tomatoes.

But I noticed Solan out in the original garden this morning, planting. So I decided to take a look when he was done.

Meanwhile, we’re in the middle of reworking the compost area, and await horse manure to finish the job. Rebecca’s ex-husband came over to lead a compost workshop a few evenings ago, with Solan and Dan paying close attention and laboring for several hours.

Then there’s the “pond,” now a wetland, again sprouting the pesky bambooish sprouts that tend to want to spread into the garden, too.

Meanwhile, yesterday, inside, a group of graduate students at the I.U. Department of Infomatics met Solan, Rebecca and I for the second time. The first time, on Saturday, Solan took them on a tour of the Green Acres Village grounds, and we all talked a bit afterwards about the the history of this place, our overall goals, and the nature of their project: to somehow help us focus in on a project that we would like to do, during a one-hour workshop. I know that sounds vague, but Rebecca and I both realized independently in the time between Saturday’s orientation and Monday’s workshop that what we should focus on is our relationship with Indiana University itself. What kinds of fruitful connections could Green Acres Village make with I.U. in general, and specifically? On Monday, we spent that hour quite productively. After brainstorming for 20 minutes we started winnowing down all the ideas to focus on three, and their possible connections, how they could leverage each other: these were: networking with likely people in the University (various faculty and/or living/learning dorms) who would be open to us giving presentations on the nature and evolution of Green Acres Permaculture Village, and then, also, possibly a radio presentation that might segue into a regular weekly radio show.

Who knows? We’re already networked with SPEA (School of Public and Environmental Affairs), and have utilized interns from there, plus, a few years ago, two classes utilized Green Acres Garden for  projects in composting and building a cob oven. But we would especially love to get connected to the Art Department, for art projects, not just here in the Village, but throughout the Green Acres Neighborhood. And of course, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Biology, Sociology, City Planning, Infomatics, and other Departments might be open to creating educational programs that utilize this neighborhood or this village in some manner. Since ours is the neighborhood closest to the I.U. campus, partnering is an welcome opportunity.

Here are two photos from yesterday morning’s workshop.

They will organize and write-up their findings, both to satisfy their course requirement, and perhaps, to actually help us make further I.U. connections!

Next up? Our regular Thursday Community Dinner, this week at the second DeKist house, with Andreas in the lead.